CM Punk May Have Returned to Wrestling Without Anyone Noticing

Buckle up wrestling fans, and grab all your grains of sand, because it’s late Saturday night on a slow news weekend and things are about to get real wild…

Our story begins earlier this afternoon with the following video put out by MKE Wrestling, a promotion based out of Wisconsin run by Ring of Honor wrestler and two-time ROH World Television Champion Silas Young.

MKE Wrestling ran an event to honor the final night of wrestling at the Knights of Columbus Hall in West Allis, Wisconsin on Friday night. That venue is an important one for a lot of Mid-West wrestlers who have frequented the Hall over the years, and is scheduled to be torn down.

In the video, you can see a masked individual being let into the building via a side door. He then rushes the ring and drops local wrestler Daryck St. Holmes with a GTS.

Now, we hear what you’re saying loud and clear, dear internet. This wouldn’t exactly be the first time a random indie wrestler in the Mid-West used a GTS or any one of CM Punk’s various signature moves to get an easy reaction from the crowd.

This is where things start to get a little more crazy.

Several individuals on Reddit in multiple threads also made the link between the above wrestling event, and a photo that CM Punk was geo-tagged in on Instagram. The photo, below, was uploaded on Saturday afternoon, one day later, in the same city in Wisconsin as the MKE Wrestling event took place at. Oh, and he just so happens to be wearing the same hoodie as the mystery attacker…

Linking the photo to the promotion’s rather obvious, heavy-handed hints started the rumor mill ablaze, but even so there were obviously a healthy amount of skeptics who doubted that the actual CM Punk would show up under a mask at a tiny indie event that nobody’s ever heard about.

And then there’s CM Punk himself, who in a 2016 interview with ESPN’s Russillo & Kanell Show, when asked about a potential return to the wrestling world, had the following to say:

“No, I don’t think so. It’s one of those ‘never say never’ things. I like to cover all my bases, just in case some internet dweeb is like, ‘YOU SAID YOU’D NEVER WRESTLE AGAIN!’ WWE? No, absolutely not. But you never know. I could pop up here and there. Let me explain that to you even better. It’s not gonna be anything televised. It’ll be me in a ninja f***ing outfit, wrestling one of my buddies, and nobody’s ever going to know.”

Still, all of that was just speculation and conjecture, UNTIL…

Silas Young, who we noted above runs the MKE Wrestling promotion, took to Twitter after the show with the following message:

“Last night we held MKE Wrestling at the Knights of Columbus building in West Allis. The place was packed with 350 people. This place has had 25+ years of wrestling and is the place a lot of guys started. Guys like Colt Cabana as well as a Punk who showed up in a mask last night”.

Last night we held @MKE_Wrestling at the Knights of Columbus building in west allis the place was packed with 350 people. This place has had 25+ years of wrestling and is the place a lot of guys started. Guys like @ColtCabana as well as a Punk who showed up in a mask last night

It also happened that Ace Steel, who is credited as having trained both CM Punk and Colt Cabana, among others, was featured on the show itself. If you go back through the former WWE Champion’s Twitter likes over the past few days, he actually liked Tweets from both Dave Prazak and Ace Steel promoting the MKE Wrestling event.

“Also in action will be Ace Steel! Ace Steel is perhaps best known as the man who trained CM Punk and Colt Cabana. Punk and Cabana made their names performing at the Knights of Columbus in West Allis, so we found it only fitting to bring in the man who helped mold them into the stars they are today.”

That’s it. That’s what we’ve got so far.

What do you think? Was it the real CM Punk having a little fun with his friends to honor a venue and a fanbase close to his early years in the business?

Or was it a small Mid-West indie promotion trying to generate a buzz with an unnecessarily elaborate plan that, somehow, would have had to involve the actual CM Punk’s cooperation anyways? I mean, unless he just happened to be at that high school, wearing the same hoodie, literally the next day…